The Runaway Equator by Lilian Bell

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Title: The Runaway Equator
And the Strange Adventures of a Little Boy in Pursuit of It

Author: Lilian Bell

Illustrator: Peter Newell

Release Date: April 17, 2020 [EBook #61854]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1

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THE RUNAWAY EQUATOR

“They saw the Equator making off, a mile or two away”

THE RUNAWAY

EQUATOR

And the Strange Adventures of a

Little Boy in Pursuit of It

BY

LILIAN BELL

AUTHOR OF “THE LOVE AFFAIRS OF AN OLD MAID,”

“THE EXPATRIATES,” “ABROAD WITH THE JIMMIES,”

“HOPE LORING,” “AT HOME WITH THE JARDINES,” ETC.

Illustrated by

PETER NEWELL

NEW YORK

FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY

PUBLISHERS

September, 1911

Copyright, 1910, 1911, by

The Curtis Publishing Company

Copyright, 1911, by

Frederick A. Stokes Company

All rights reserved, including that of translation into foreign

languages, including the Scandinavian

TO

JIMMIE BELL, JUNIOR
SECOND INFANTRY, U.S.A.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER
PAGE

I. In which Billy Meets Nimbus
3

II. The Enchanted Trolley Car
13

III. The Equator Is Loose
23

IV. The Equine Ox and the Evening Star
37

V. In Pursuit
47

VI. On the Passive Volcano
55

VII. Jack Frost
63

VIII. The Compass
73

IX. The Trail of the Runaway
83

X. Where Night Is Six Months Long
93

XI. The End of the Chase
105

XII. Across the Rainbow
115

ILLUSTRATIONS

“THEY SAW THE EQUATOR MAKING OFF A MILE OR TWO AWAY”
Frontispiece

Facing

Page

“WE’LL TAKE THIS SUNBEAM WITH US”
6

“NIMBUS FOLDED THE TRANSFER INTO A TINY WAND AND SAID: ‘THIS CAR FOR
THE EQUATOR!’”
10

“BOTH THE PLUMBER’S APPRENTICES JUMPED HASTILY TO THE GROUND”
14

“STRAIGHT INTO A GREAT PILE OF SNOW WENT THE CAR”
28

“PRESENTLY THEY BEGAN TO CRY AS HARD AS EVER THEY COULD”
32

“NOW, SIR, WHERE IS THAT EQUATOR?”
40

“THERE SUDDENLY APPEARED SEVEN LITTLE CHAPS”
48

“WITH A GREAT CRACKLING NOISE THEY SHOT INTO THE VOID”
50

“BILLY TOOK A SHARP STICK AND POKED THE EQUATOR SMARTLY”
60

“SEATING HIMSELF ON THE EDGE OF THE CLIFF, HE SANG”
66

“CONFRONTING THE EQUINE OX WAS THE CONDUCTOR, WAVING HIS HANDS AND
SHOUTING”
76

“THEY TIED THE TROLLEY ROPE TO HIS HORN AND SECURED HIM TO THE CAR”
78

“A METEOR DROPPED AMONG THEM”
80

“‘LISTEN,’ SAID THE EQUINE OX, AND THROWING BACK HIS HEAD, HE SANG”
84

“THE EQUINE OX CROWDED INTO THE REAR DOOR”
90

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[x]

M

BILLY MEETS NIMBUS

THE RUNAWAY

EQUATOR

CHAPTER I

IN WHICH BILLY MEETS NIMBUS

OTHER had been helping Billy with his geography lesson, sitting in the garden on a lovely day early in spring, and
showing Billy how the earth revolves on its axis. To illustrate this difficult matter and to make it interesting, she

had taken a big yellow orange to represent the Earth and had used a stick of lemon candy for the Pole. She made the
Equator out of a black rubber band such as you put around fat envelopes.
Then, when Billy said that he understood, Mother dug a hole in the orange and stuck the lemon stick in it and, handing it
to Billy, said with a droll twinkle in her blue eyes, which always seemed to be laughing:
“Would you like to eat up the Earth through the North Pole?”
Now Billy had never before tasted the joys of an orange eaten through a stick of lemon candy; so when Mother, who
had a trick of remembering nice things from her own childhood, showed Billy how it was done, he settled down to a
blissful half hour in which he meant to devour the whole earth.
It tasted so good that he rolled over on the short grass, under a lilac-bush in full bloom, and only took his lips from the
North Pole long enough to tell his mother that it tasted “bully.”
“Well,” said his mother, standing up and shaking out her blue dress, “I must go now. Here is your geography. Don’t
forget to bring it in when you come, and don’t lose the Equator off the Earth, even if you are eating it. I don’t know
what would become of us if the Equator really should get away!”
Billy laughed aloud. It really was no trouble at all to understand things when Mother made them appear so funny.
He lay on his back looking up into the sky, which was just the color of his mother’s blue dress. White clouds, like
mountains of white feathers which must be very soft to sleep on, were over his head.
A bee was buzzing lazily over the lavender blossoms of the lilacs. A soft wind was blowing. It was indeed very pleasant.
What if the bee should turn into a fairy!
“Why don’t you?” said Billy aloud.
The bee, being puzzled, scratched his head with his left hindfoot and answered:
“Why don’t I what?”
“Why don’t you be one?”
“I am one bee!” answered the bee, striking a match on Billy’s orange and lighting a grapevine cigarette.
“Could you be a fairy?” asked Billy.
“I am always beeing things—flowers and honey—so of course I could bee a fairy. How do you know that I am not
one? Look at me!”
Billy sat up and looked.
“Well, I never!” exclaimed Billy. “A minute ago I thought you were a bee!”
“I can bee anything I choose,” said the Fairy. “That’s why you thought I was a bee. Because I can bee!”
“Who are you now?” asked Billy.
“I am the Geography Fairy,” answered the stranger.
He held out his hand and then looked at it.
“It’s not raining yet,” he observed; “still——”
Without finishing his sentence he unfolded a pink parasol and tossed it into the air. It sailed away, slowly at first, then
more rapidly as the light wind caught it and carried it out of sight beyond the lilac-bush.
“I won’t need it till it begins to rain,” he explained, “so they might as well have it.”
“Who?” gasped Billy.

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“The sunbeams. If a sunbeam gets wet he’s done for. Haven’t you ever noticed that?”
Billy thought he had noticed something of the kind. Anyway the sunbeams all disappeared directly it began to rain. But
being just an ordinary little boy, he was much more interested in the conversation of the wonderful stranger than he was
in sunbeams, and that is why he asked:
“What is your name, if you please?”
“My name is Nimbus and I live in the clouds with the other fairies. I was named after one of the clouds.”
“But,” objected Billy, “I don’t believe in fairies.”
“Very well,” said Nimbus briskly, “keep right on don’t believing. It doesn’t disturb me in the least.”
“And besides,” said Billy, “there couldn’t be such a thing as a Geography Fairy.”
“How do you know?” demanded Nimbus.
“Because,” said Billy, “I have never seen one.”
“Nonsense!” returned Nimbus. “Did you ever see a noise?”
“No,” Billy admitted, “I don’t think I ever did. At least I don’t remember ever having seen one.”
“Well, do you believe that there aren’t any noises?”
Billy had no reply that seemed suitable, and so he said nothing.
Apparently not caring whether he got an answer or not, Nimbus leaped lightly from the lilac blossom and, picking up an
irregular sunbeam that filtered through the bush, he set it carefully on edge against the brim of Billy’s hat.

“We’ll take this sunbeam with us”

“They get tired lying flat on their backs so much,” he said. “We’ll take this one with us when we go. When we’re hungry
we’ll eat it.”
“But we’re not going anywhere,” said Billy. “At least I am not. I’ve got to go into the house and put the toys away in a
few minutes.”
“Tut! tut!” said Nimbus. “Doesn’t the proverb say ‘Never do anything to-day you can just as well put off until to-
morrow’? Let’s enchant a trolley car and go look after the Equator. I ought to be there now. That’s my job, looking
after the Equator. I’ve left the Equine Ox there, but he has such a habit of getting indigestion in one of his four stomachs,
and sometimes in all of them, that he is very inattentive to business.”
“Indigestion in four stomachs must be terribly distressing,” said Billy. “But what is an Equine Ox?”
“You surely see one twice a year,” said Nimbus. “But they are always around. They have to be somewhere.”
“I suppose they do,” said Billy, “but what are they?”
“Their names are Vernal and Autumnal. Here’s a poem I wrote about them once. My friends say I am conceited about
my poetry, but I’m not. I don’t think it is as good as it really is.”

“I never had an Equine Ox

To glad me with its soft brown eye,

But when I stroked its brindled locks

It always rudely asked me why.

“I never whispered fondly in

The creature’s smooth and velvet ear,

That it did not absurdly grin

And shed a cadent, mirthful tear.

“I never clasped its crumpled horn,

Nor gazed on it with loving look,

That it did not give moos of scorn

And sometimes even try to hook.

“So, though I love the Equine Ox,

I must admit that, on the whole,

His conduct very often shocks

My trusting and confiding soul.”

“That,” said Nimbus, “will give you an excellent idea of the Equine Ox. Now let us enchant that trolley car and be off
about our business.”

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“Pooh!” said Billy, “you can’t enchant a trolley car.”
“There you go again,” said Nimbus, “never believing in things. Bring me a trolley car and I’ll show you whether or not I
can enchant it.”
“I can’t bring you a trolley car,” said Billy. “You’ll have to hail one on the street if you want one. Anyway they don’t go
to the Equator; they only go to town.”
“We’ll see where they go,” returned Nimbus. “If I were going alone I’d go on a cloud, but I don’t suppose you could
sit on a cloud, could you?”
He regarded Billy doubtfully.
“I’m sure I couldn’t,” said Billy. “Besides, what’s the need of going at all?”
“Oh, I really must go! A foolish Spring Tide broke one of the tropics the other day, and if the other gets broken there
will be nothing to hold the Equator down but the meridians, and you know they’re very fragile.”
Billy didn’t know that, but he nodded intelligently. It is always best to pretend to know more about geography than you
really do.
“We’ll be back in time for dinner,” continued Nimbus; “that is, if I don’t have to fasten up the tides again.”
“Why,” said Billy, “you don’t mean to say you have to fasten the tides?”
“Certainly!” replied Nimbus. “You know the tides are always trying to put out the Moon, and they go chasing around
the Earth after her night and day. Of course the shore stops them after a while and drives them back, and that’s what
makes them high and low. They’re high when they run up and try to wash over the shore, and low when the shore
drives them back again. But to keep them from going too far we tie them down with meridians. That’s why they call
them tides. Each one is tied, don’t you see?”
“Gracious!” exclaimed Billy. “I hope they can’t get untied and put the Moon out.”
“Oh, they won’t,” Nimbus assured him, “while I’m watching them! Sometimes they sneak up on her out of the ocean in
little drops that we call mist, but the Sun always catches them at it, and sends them scurrying down in rain again.”
“I almost believe I’ll go,” said Billy, “if you’re sure we can be back in time.”
“Not a doubt of it,” said Nimbus; “I’ll send you back on a meteor if I have to stay.”
Billy excused himself for a minute and ran into the house to tell his mother, but she was nowhere to be found. So he
wrote a note in which he explained that he had gone away for a little while with the Geography Fairy. Returning to the
garden, he found that Nimbus had now grown to be as large as a middle-sized baby. He was strolling across the lawn
on his way to the front gate.
Billy trudged along by his side, and soon they were at the street corner awaiting the coming of a big red trolley car,
which Billy hailed at Nimbus’s suggestion.
When the two got in the conductor looked at the queer little stranger in amazement.
But Nimbus only nodded at him coldly, leaped up on the seat and began digging into his pocket, from which he
presently pulled a huge blue transfer.
This he held out when the conductor came for the fare.
“That ain’t no good,” said the conductor.
For reply Nimbus folded the transfer up into a tiny wand, touched the conductor on the cap with it and said:
“This car for the Equator. Passengers desiring transfers for the Arctic Circle or the North Pole will kindly mention it
before we get to Cuba.”

“Nimbus folded the transfer into a tiny wand and said:

‘This car for the Equator!’”

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O

THE ENCHANTED TROLLEY CAR

CHAPTER II

THE ENCHANTED TROLLEY CAR

F COURSE such an announcement as that made a great commotion in the trolley car. The other passengers, a
thin deacon, two plumber’s apprentices and a burglar, wanted to get off immediately.

“I was going back to the shop to get the tools,” said one of the plumber’s apprentices.
“I was on my way to a horse trade,” explained the deacon.
“And I,” said the burglar, “was just looking about for a nice easy house to rob. They don’t have any houses at the
Equator, so I would have absolutely nothing to do.”
“Tut! tut!” said the conductor peevishly. “Keep your seats, gents. There ain’t no such a place as the Equator on this
line. You’re on the wrong car, young chaps,” he added, turning to Billy and Nimbus.
Billy was troubled at this. Could it be that Nimbus really couldn’t enchant the trolley car after all?
But the Fairy only smiled as the car, which had started away suddenly, came to a stop, as if it had run into something.
“I thought we wouldn’t get past it,” he said.
“Get past what?” inquired Billy and the plumber’s apprentices in a breath.
“That imaginary line,” said Nimbus. “I drew it across the track.”
“But,” said Billy, “no imaginary line really goes anywhere except the Equator.”
“Neither will the trolley car until I let it,” replied Nimbus. “So they are in the same fix.”
The motorman now came into the car.
“Not enough juice,” he growled. “She turns all right, but she don’t get nowhere.”
“Try her again,” advised the conductor anxiously. He was looking at Nimbus and Billy with suspicion. “You kids ain’t
been soapin’ the track, have you?” he inquired suddenly.
“Oh, no, sir!” said Billy. “I’m not allowed to do that.”
The motorman again turned on the power, but although the wheels hummed and whirred on the track, not an inch
forward did the car go.
“There’s something wrong,” he said, “but I don’t know what it is. She turns all right, and she acts all right, but she don’t
go ahead none.”
“She won’t,” said Nimbus, “till these people get off. It would be a shame to take them to the Equator.”
“Certainly it would,” said the deacon. “I for one am going to get off.”
“Me, too,” said the burglar.

“Both the plumber’s apprentices jumped hastily to the ground”

And both of them did.
“It’s all right with us,” said the plumber’s apprentices, settling back in their seats. “Our time will go on just the same.”
“Well, it ain’t with me,” said the motorman. “I’m going to see what’s stopping her.”
He went to the rear door and was about to swing off the steps when he uttered a cry of alarm.
“Great rabbits!” he shouted. “She’s risin’ off’m the track!”
At this both the plumber’s apprentices ran to the platform and jumped hastily to the ground.
The motorman and conductor hurried to the front platform, but when they reached it the car had risen thirty feet in the
air and was sailing merrily through space.
The conductor reeled back into the car and sank breathless on a seat. The motorman followed him.
“What kind of a way to do is this?” demanded the conductor of Nimbus. “And me with a wife and five children.”
“There is no danger at all,” said Nimbus soothingly. “We’ll have to come down again, you know. Everything does, that
goes up.”
The conductor had got a little over his fright, and was looking out of the window.

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“I don’t know where we’re going, Tommy,” he said to the motorman, “but it does look as if we was on our way, don’t
it?”
“It’s an outrage!” said the motorman, “and I’ve a good mind to chuck this little feller overboard. It’s all his doings.”
But Nimbus paid no attention to him at all.
“You see,” he said to Billy, “that a trolley car can be enchanted if you go at it right. I could enchant the conductor and
motorman if I wanted to. I think I’d turn the motorman into a bull.”
The motorman grew pale at this.
“Now, don’t do nothing like that,” he said. “I like this flying business, honest I do.”
“Very well,” said Nimbus, “but I think you had better go out on the platform and look for stars. We may be running into
one any time.”
The motorman was glad to return to his post, and the conductor arose and walked unsteadily to the rear platform,
where he held fast to the dashboard rail and gazed with open-mouthed wonder at the scene below.
“We’ll soon be coming to the Dog Star,” Nimbus told Billy. “His name is Sirius, but he isn’t. He’s almost eight million
years old, but he still behaves like a Puppy Star at the snow-making season. He worries the Snow Fairies half to
death.”
“What are Snow Fairies?” asked Billy.
“They are the people that make the snow. Didn’t you ever hear the proverb, ‘Make snow while the moon shines’?”
Billy wasn’t quite sure. He had heard one very much like that, though, about hay, and he wondered if they made snow
in fields and left it out to dry in the moonshine.
“Yes,” said Nimbus, although Billy had not spoken, “it is very much the same. The snowflakes grow on the little stalks
that shoot up from the clouds, and the Snow Fairies harvest them and dry them in the moonlight. Then they sift it down
on the land and sea, whenever Jack Frost says the little boys and girls are tired of nutting and making autumn-leaf
bonfires, and want to coast and throw snowballs.”
“Do they make hail that way, too?” asked Billy.
“Oh! gracious, no. They break the hail off the rain clouds with their hammers, and it freezes on the way down. They
soon tire of that, though, so they never keep it up long. That is why you hear people say ‘Hail and Farewell.’ You have
to say good-by to a hailstorm almost before you’ve had time to say hello to it.”
“I think it is very ill-mannered of the Dog Star to worry them,” said Billy.
“Oh, Dog Stars have no manners. That is very well shown in the poem I wrote about the Dog Star. Did you ever
happen to hear it?”
“No,” said Billy. “I never did.”
“Well,” said Nimbus, “as nearly as I can remember it runs something like this:

“Dog Star, Dog Star, burning bright,
You can neither read nor write,
Yet you frolic just the same,
And have not a thought of shame.

“When I say: ‘Add one and one,’
You reply: ‘It can’t be done.
Sums are flat and grammar stale,
I prefer to chase my tail.’

“When I ask: ‘Who built the ark?’
You turn somersaults and bark:
Or you growl, with drooping tail,
‘Was it Jonah or the Whale?’

“Dog Star, Dog Star, you don’t know,
Euclid, Vergil, Scipio,
Algebra or Calculus,
My! But you are frivolous.”

“You see,” continued Nimbus, “the Dog Star cares absolutely nothing for manners. He even barks at O’Taurus.”
“And who,” inquired Billy, “is O’Taurus?”
“He’s the Irish Bull,” said Nimbus. “I’ll tell you more about him later. I’ve got to go to meet this Meteor now.”
Billy had noticed that for some time it had been getting brighter and brighter, although the Sun had hidden himself behind

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a great wall of blue-black clouds. Now he looked through the front windows and saw a great star sweeping rapidly
down on them, swishing a long tail behind him.
“Is—is it a comet?” he asked in affright, observing that the motorman rushed into the car, slamming the door after him.
“Comet nothing!” said Nimbus. “It’s only a fourth- class Meteor with a message for me. They’re the A.D.T. boys up
here, and he’s probably brought some word from the Equine Ox.”
The Meteor came alongside and Billy read in gold letters across his glowing cap the words:

PLANETARY MESSENGER SERVICE

No. 7,622,451

“My!” he exclaimed, “there are a lot of them, aren’t there?”
“Seven million nine hundred thousand six hundred and three,” said Nimbus. “What have you got, boy?”
“Message, sir,” said the Meteor briskly, taking off his cap and extracting a blue envelope.
Nimbus took it and ran his eye over it hastily.
“Here’s a pretty kettle of fish,” he said, handing the paper to Billy.
This is what Billy read as he held the paper in his trembling fingers:

“Accidentally went to sleep and the Spring Tide broke the other tropic. Equator trying to get away, and
think I can’t hold him long. Please come or send help as soon as possible.

“Regretfully, Vernal E. Ox.”

So! The Equator was trying to do the very thing Mother told Billy not to let him do! He was trying to slip off the earth
by way of the South Pole!

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“B

THE EQUATOR IS LOOSE

CHAPTER III

THE EQUATOR IS LOOSE

OTHER that Equine Ox,” said Nimbus. “I might have known he’d do something like that, and just before
procession week, too.”

“Procession week?” said Billy wonderingly.
“Yes, the week of the procession of the Equine Oxes. The Sun and the Moon and their oldest daughter, the Evening
Star, were coming down to see it, and Jack Frost and Aurora Borealis ought to be there now. And that miserable
Equine Ox has gone and spoiled it all. He isn’t fit for anything but a barbecue.”
“What are you going to do?” asked Billy, while the conductor and the motorman gaped in a dazed silence.
“Do? Why, fix it, of course. I only hope we can get there before he breaks away altogether. It would be a beautiful
state of affairs to have an Equator charging up and down the world, wouldn’t it?”
“I think it would be fun,” ventured Billy.
“Oh, certainly!” said Nimbus. “When you played under the trees in your front yard, do you think it would be fun to have
cocoanuts drop on you instead of acorns? Instead of rabbits and chipmunks in the woods, do you think it would be fun
to see lions and tigers and boa-constrictors and laughing hyenas, to say nothing of hippopotamuses with teeth like
banisters? Yes, it would be real jolly now, wouldn’t it?”
Billy saw that Nimbus was seriously disturbed and he kept silent.
The Meteor, who had entered the car unasked and taken a seat on the floor, now got up and began to shoot violently
from one door to another, sometimes zigzagging so that he bumped the windows. His blazing tail trailed after him, and
once or twice Billy had to draw back quickly to keep his face from a severe switching.
The conductor and the motorman were very much annoyed by these antics, and at last the conductor said:
“What’s the matter with him, anyway? Why don’t he sit still?”
“He can’t sit still,” said Nimbus. “A meteor is a shooting star and ever so often he has to shoot.”
“Shootin’ is against the rules,” growled the motorman. “No shootin’ allowed in any cars of this company.”
“He isn’t shooting aloud. He’s shooting to himself,” said Nimbus. “I’ll send him back to the Equator as soon as I
compose a message that is strong enough to tell the Equine Ox what I think of him.”
Billy had been looking out of the window. A long way off he noticed a row of enormous signs, each with curious
characters on it, all outlined in bright green and blue stars.
“Signs of the Zodiac,” said the Meteor, coming to a sudden stop and looking over Billy’s shoulder. “‘Keep off the sky,’
and ‘No loose dogs allowed,’ and such like. The Aerolites have just turned ’em on. They come right after the twilight.”
“I—I don’t think I understand,” said Billy.
“Neither do I,” said the Meteor, “but I’ll explain it in a minute. I’ve got a few shots in me now that have got to go off.”
He leaped to his feet and began to dart backward and forward in the car till Nimbus, who was writing on a pad of
paper, became irritated and slammed the car-door on the Meteor’s tail.
“Isn’t he peevish!” said the Meteor, sinking down at Billy’s side. “But as I was saying about the Aerolites, every night
the Sun goes down, as you know, and it would be pitch dark until the Moon and the Stars came up if it wasn’t for
them.
“One of them keeps watch until he sees the Sun starting to slide behind a mountain or into the sea, and then he tells the
others, and they all hurry around and light the twilights. When they have them all lit there is enough light to see by till the
Moon and the Stars get out of bed for the night. After that they can light the Signs of the Zodiac. They get paid for that.
Lighting the twilights they have to do for their board and lodging and motive power.”
Nimbus left off writing. “I think that will do,” he said, handing the pad to Billy.
Billy read:

“V. E. Ox, Equator.
“Of all the good-for-nothing, idle, dull-witted, stupid, feather-brained idiots I have met in twelve million
years you are easily the worst. Send that Spring Tide to bed for a week. Get the other Equine Ox and a
regiment of elephants and sit on the Equator till I get there. If he tries to get away duck him in the ocean.
My only regret is that you have but four stomachs instead of ninety-four to get indigestion in.

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“Yours disgustedly, Nimbus.”

The Meteor took the paper from Billy’s hand, Nimbus released the tail from the door and he shot forth into the night.
Billy began to be very much distressed about the darkness, remembering his promise to his mother to be home for
dinner. Nimbus, noticing his troubled face and feeling better now that he had unburdened himself of his opinion of the
Equine Ox, sat beside him and said cheerfully:
“Never mind, Billy, it’s always half dark up here. We’re out of the air, you know, and we have to have air to see the
light through, just as your mother has to have opera-glasses to see the play through. We’ll be home in time for dinner.
Never fear.”
At this assurance Billy felt much better, and became very eager to see the great fight that he knew would take place
when they got down to the Equator and took part in the effort to keep him from escaping.
But the motorman and the conductor were in no such cheerful mood. They sat apart in a corner and talked in whispers;
and Billy, listening although he did not mean to, soon learned that they were talking about the Snow Fairies.
“It’s them,” said the conductor, “that spills snow all over the tracks and ties up the lines in winter.”
“Sure it is!” said the motorman. “Let’s get off and fix ’em.”
Billy glanced out of the window. There, right before his eyes, he saw a great number of little people, clad in white
uniforms, raking huge masses of what seemed to be white flowers on the upper side of a cloud. Through the dim half-
light he watched them working away, with rakes and pitchforks, some of them piling the white flakes into great stacks,
while others pulled long rows of them to the edge of the cloud and pushed them over the side.
Billy remembered that it was summer when he left home and he wondered how it happened that snow-making was
going on; but following with his eyes the flakes that whirled downward he saw a long chain of mountains far below. He
knew, of course, that snow fell on mountains, even in summer time, so he understood.
“I tell you what I’ll do,” the motorman was saying; “I’ll go out and back her sideways and we’ll run through ’em. That’ll
knock ’em all off the cloud, and we won’t have no more snow.”
“Great idea,” said the conductor. “We’ll get ’em all at one lick.”
Billy looked anxiously at Nimbus, who overheard, but only chuckled. “Let ’em try it,” he said, “and see what happens.”
Nimbus joined Billy at the window, and the motorman and the conductor, seeing that the Fairy’s back was turned, got
up very quietly and went out on the front platform.
The motorman put his lever on the controller and, looking around carefully to make sure that he was not observed,
reversed the power.
The car trembled, stopped, then began to go backward with a sidelong motion that took it right into the snow cloud.
Instantly the air grew cold, and the wind howled around the trolley pole and rattled the windows.
Straight into a great pile of snow went the car, and the Snow Fairies, looking up, saw it coming and skipped away in
every direction.
There was a shock, snow flew in showers, then the car buried itself in a great white pile up to the window tops and
stopped stock still.
Stamping and pawing the snow out of their eyes and mouths, the motorman and conductor came back into the car.
“Pleasant weather, gentlemen,” said Nimbus. “Looks a little like snow, however. Suppose you go out now and clear the
track. You’re used to it.”
Angry, but too much ashamed of themselves to show their feelings, the motorman and the conductor got shovels from
under the seats and went out to clear away a path for the car.
“It always pays best to let Nature take care of herself, as the boy said who sat on the volcano,” Nimbus observed.
“It will be a dreadful delay, though, and we are in such a hurry to get to the Equator,” said Billy.
“Oh, no, there will be no delay at all! The Cloud is going right in our direction just as fast as we were. We’ll warm up,
however, for it’s a trifle cold,” said Nimbus. And taking out the sunbeam he had brought with him from the lilac bush, he
hit a piece out of it and handed it to Billy.
“Eat it,” he said. “Nothing so stimulating in cold weather as a sunbeam. We’ll just sit here and wait for an answer to my
telegram. And you can act acquainted with the sky people.”
Billy looked out of the window into the sky. Was it true, he wondered, that the Sun and Moon were really sky people?
“What’s the matter?” asked Nimbus.
“I was just wondering if the Stars are all really people,” said Billy.
“Really people!” said Nimbus. “Well I should say they are. And all the Clouds are, too. You see that bunch over there?
Well, that is Mrs. Pink-Cloud and Mrs. White-Cloud and Mrs. Pearl-Cloud and Mrs. Mackerel-Cloud and Mrs.
Yellow-Cloud sitting together and sewing on party dresses for their children to go to the Star children’s birthday party.

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It’s warm over there where they are.”
“Oh!” said Billy. “Are they all named?”
“Named! Of course they are! And every Star, too. But nobody can remember them but their own mother, Mrs. Moon.
Even their father, Mr. Sun, gets confused sometimes and mixes the boys’ names with the girls’.”
“Are the Clouds people, too?” asked Billy wonderingly.
“Just as much people as you are,” answered Nimbus seriously. “Old General Gray-Cloud and old General Thunder-
Cloud are great fighters and have awful battles. You can hear them down on the Earth sometimes. It sounds like
thunder and looks like lightning from where you live, but from where we live—Oh, my!”
“Dear me,” said Billy, “how very interesting! And do the mothers teach their children to behave the way our mothers do
on the Earth, or are they allowed to do as they please in the sky?”
“Well, you do show your ignorance!” said Nimbus, with such severity that Billy quite blushed for himself. “Why let me
tell you what I saw only yesterday when I was under the lilac bush waiting for you.”
“Did you know about me before I saw you?” asked Billy, much flattered.
“Why, certainly I did. I saw you having such a stupid time with a geography lesson which I knew I could make so easy
for you that I said to myself: ‘I’ll just wait until I have him all to myself and then I’ll show him!’”
“That was very kind of you,” said Billy, “and I am sure that I shall never forget anything I have seen.”
“That’s just the way with me,” said Nimbus; “so what I saw of the Cloud children I will tell to you, and then it will be
just the same as if you had seen it.”
“So it will,” said Billy, who by this time had got to have great faith in the Geography Fairy.
“What do you suppose makes it rain?” asked Nimbus suddenly.
Billy thought intently for a moment. He knew he had heard something about clouds and mist and heat and cold, but for
the life of him he couldn’t remember when anybody asked him. That is what makes examinations so hard. You know,
but you can’t remember.
“Ah, ha!” said Nimbus. “You can’t think, can you? Well, I’ll tell you, and you’ll never forget this reason. The other day,
when their mothers were all sitting and sewing, the Cloud children——”
“What are their names?” asked Billy.
“Well, there happened to be Pinkie Pink-Cloud and Goldie Gold-Cloud and Pearlie Pearl-Cloud. They asked their
mothers if they could float over Central Park and watch the Earth children at play. Their mothers said yes, so away they
went. At first it was great fun to watch, for it was Mayday and all the children were marching about in their pretty white
dresses while nursemaids and fräuleins and mademoiselles by the dozen, and a few mothers, were looking on.
“Then Pinkie and Goldie and Pearlie began to play tag among themselves, nor was it very long before Pinkie said that
Goldie did not tag her when she said she did, and Pearlie took sides; so in one moment those little sunny faces grew
black with anger and presently they began to cry as hard as ever they could.”
“Well?” said Billy, as Nimbus paused.
“Well,” repeated the Fairy, “don’t you see? Their tears were rain!”
“Oh!” said Billy.
“The next thing that happened was that their mothers looked up from their sewing and saw the dark spot over the park,
where, a few minutes ago, it had all been bright and sunny. They knew what had happened, for in April and May the
Cloud children are easily upset and cry if you poke your finger at them. So they floated over to the park and, instead of
asking the children what the matter was, as most mothers would have done, Mrs. Gold-Cloud told the children to look
down at the park.”
“And what did they see?” asked Billy, who never before had thought of looking at the Earth children through the eyes of
the clouds.
“Why, the rain spoiling all the pretty white dresses and the children all stopping their play and rushing about for shelter.”
“I know,” said Billy. “I was there myself.”
“Were you?” said Nimbus. “Then you know what happened.”
“I only know it stopped raining,” said Billy.
“But don’t you know why?” asked Nimbus.
Billy shook his head.
“Because Mrs. Gold-Cloud told the children how tears and black looks on their faces always spoiled the pleasure of
somebody else, and how smiles and sweet looks and lots of love in the heart brings happiness. When she said this, the
Cloud children dried their tears on their mothers’ cloud handkerchiefs and began to smile, and when Pinkie and Goldie
kissed each other, the whole sky brightened up. So everything got sunshiny again, and of course the rain stopped as

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soon as the tears were dried, so in five minutes the little Earth children were running about again as happy as lambs.
And the sight of their happiness made the Cloud children glad they had not been so selfish as to quarrel long.”
“They must be nice children,” said Billy thoughtfully. “That story sounds the way my mother tells things.”
“When you go back, you can tell the story to her,” said Nimbus.
“Thank you for telling me,” said Billy politely. “It is a very nice story and I sha’n’t forget it. I’ll have lots of things to tell
when I get back. What are you going to do about the Equator?”
“Hello!” The last exclamation was directed at the Meteor, who suddenly appeared through the snow bank and, panting
for breath, handed Nimbus a message which Billy read over his shoulder.
The message read:

“Glad to know you are coming, and thanks for your kind words. Equator is loose.

“Respectfully, Equine Ox.”

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